Create Stop-Motion Movies Easily with MonkeyJam

Want to motivate students?  Try adding stop-motion animations to your lessons.  Stop-motion movies are animated movies where objects are physically moved from frame to frame to create the illusion that the object is moving on its own.  Clay is often used in stop motion because of its ease of repositioning.  If clay is used, it is called claymation.  Here are some examples from Wichita USD.  These students are practicing those not-so-easy-skills of comprehension, text analysis, summarizing and retelling.  Here are some other popular stop-motion techniques using text (TPACK), PowerPoint (parts of a violin) and even marbles (blood flow) Search for stop-motion videos from your content area at the SAM Animation Gallery. 
 

MonkeyJam is a free program that makes the creation of stop motion videos extremely easy, with little training needed.  Use MonkeyJam with the webcam on your laptop and record as many frames as you need to create your movie.  MonkeyJam will then organize them into layers to create a very well organized sequence.  You can preview your results at any time to see if everything is going as expected.

In the classroom, I have had students use MonkeyJam to recreate scenes from novels, recreate historical events, and simulate scientific concepts like the life cycle of a monarch butterfly.  I have used the program with students age 5 and up.  The results are always exciting!  The final movie can be exported as an AVI file and imported into Windows Movie Maker to easily add sound, titles, and credits.

MonkeyJam is a Windows-based program.  Similar stop-motion movies can be created with a variety of other downloadable programs or on a Mac with iMovie.

~Vern Andrews, TRC Facilitator, North Jackson USD 335